History of the Jews in Japan
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 2,000 (2014) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Tokyo, Kobe | |
| Languages | |
| Hebrew, English, Japanese | |
| Religion | |
| Judaism and other religions, including Buddhism |
The history of the Jews in Japan is well documented in modern times with various traditions relating to much earlier eras.
Jews are a minor ethnic and religious group in Japan, presently consisting of only about 2,000 people or about 0.0016% of Japan's total population.
It was not until the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry following the Convention of Kanagawa and the end of Japan's "closed-door" foreign policy that Jewish families began to settle in Japan. The first recorded Jewish settlers arrived at Yokohama in 1861. By 1895, this community, which by then consisted of about 50 families, established the first synagogue in Japan. Part of this community would later move to Kobe after the great Kanto earthquake of 1923.
Another early Jewish settlement was one established in the 1880s in Nagasaki, a large Japanese port city opened to foreign trade by the Portuguese. This community was larger than the one in Yokohama, consisting of more than 100 families. It was here that the Beth Israel Synagogue was created in 1894. The settlement would continually grow and remain active until it eventually declined by the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th century. The community's Torah scroll would eventually be passed down to the Jews of Kobe, a group formed of freed Russian Jewish war prisoners that had participated in the Czar's army and the Russian Revolution of 1905.
From the mid 1920s until the 1950s, the Kobe Jewish community was the largest Jewish community in Japan, formed by hundreds of Jews arriving from Russia (originating from the Manchurian city of Harbin), the Middle East (mainly from Iraq and Syria), as well as from Central and Eastern European countries (primarily Germany). It had both an Ashkenazi and a Sephardic synagogue. During this time, Tokyo's Jewish community (now Japan's largest) was slowly growing with the arrival of Jews from the United States, Western Europe, and Russia.
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